About Us

We’re focused on understanding and shaping the impact of technology on society

Who We Are

We support organizations working at the intersections of learning, workforce, and infrastructure. Founded in 2011 by David Siegel, co-founder and co-chairman of the financial sciences company Two Sigma, we believe that philanthropy is society’s risk capital – it can help drive innovation by investing in local leaders and community-born solutions, fostering prosperous and equitable futures for all. Our work is centered around funding organizations that address society’s most critical challenges, while supporting innovative civic and community leaders, social entrepreneurs, researchers, and more that are driving this work forward.

Our Mission

To understand and shape the impact of technology on society

Our Vision

A world in which all people have the tools, skills, and context necessary to engage meaningfully in a rapidly changing society

A Brief History

2007

The Siegel Charitable Foundation is created.

2011

We were granted our 501(c)(3) status and were renamed Siegel Family Endowment.

2012 – 2014

We embarked on our inaugural grantmaking years. Some of our first grantee organizations were MIT, New York City FIRST, and the Scratch Foundation (then called Code-to-Learn).

2015

We hired our founding Executive Director and created our first mission: “To ensure education is increasingly relevant to today’s technology driven society. To advance creative and innovative approaches to learning through technology.” We also developed our first signature interest areas: Computational Thinking, EdTech, and Career Readiness.

2016

We grew our staff, refined our mission to its current form, added “Open Learning” as an interest area, launched a new visual identity, and continued to grow and diversify our portfolio of grantees in an effort to make sure Siegel was built to last.

2017-2018

Sensing a growing need among organizations that are tackling internet health, digital and data rights, information integrity, and others, we began forming partnerships with a range of technology-engaging organizations. We also doubled down on our commitment to the computer science movement by incubating CSforALL in house. 

2019

Katy Knight took over as Executive Director. We further refined and articulated our scientific approach to grantmaking, one driven by questions and a quest to learn rather than promote pre-defined solutions.  

2020

Covid rocked the foundations of our world and work, and increased the urgency of our mission. We launched our multidimensional infrastructure portfolio area, with a seminal whitepaper that unpacks the need to define, design, govern, and fund infrastructure differently in the next century than we have in the previous. Read our 2020 Year in Review.

2021

We stood up an in-house research team, laid out our rationale and approach, brought on our inaugural cohort of fellows, and partnered with a number of mission-aligned grantees. Read our 2021 Year in Review. 

2022

We further refined our strategy, nearly doubled the size of our team, and set a record in grantmaking. We also launched our second whitepaper, Schools as Community Infrastructure, which offers a vision for schools and learning as vital public goods, and introduced a refreshed Workforce Strategy that asks how we might put equity at the center of the economy. Read our 2022 in Review.

2023

2023 was a year of organizational growth, exploration, and reflection.  We invested in understanding the lessons from the last few years of grantmaking in our post-pandemic reality and growing our research, grantmaking, and external engagement teams to meet the unique moment of technological transformation head-on. Read our 2023 in Review.

Meet

Our Team

Our team has a wide range of experience and expertise. Learn more about each of us, or reach out to a specific Siegel team member below.  To see open positions on our team, click here.

Research Coordinator

Addi Addison

Research Associate

Amanda Ahern

Grantmaking Manager

Ali Chin

In-House Research Fellow

Owen Davis

Operations Coordinator

Jolie De La Rosa

VICE president & Head of Grantmaking

Joshua Elder

Senior Vice President & Head of Research

John Irons

President & Executive Director

Katy Knight

SENIOR Manager & Head of External Engagement

Laura Maher

EXECUTIVE COORDINATOR

Nicole Smoot

Research Associate

Madison Snider

Vice President & Chief Operating Officer

Jumee Song

Senior Knowledge and Impact Associate

Kyla Kasharian

Grantmaking Manager

Evan Trout

External engagement associate

Ellery Wong

About Our Chairman

“Computational thinking is more than just a way to approach problem solving. It’s a way of processing and understanding the world through technology.

Siegel’s founder David Siegel must have understood this on a fundamental level when he first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. David cites that experience as opening his eyes to the limitless number of ways that people and computers could interact in the future – and the infinite possibilities for what computers and technology would eventually be able to do on their own.

David Siegel, Founder

Learn More